The undercarriages and underbodies of vehicles, including automobiles, vans and trucks, have become common places for criminals and terrorists to hide smuggled contraband, explosives, and even persons.
Along national borders, such as the U.S.-Mexican border, it is not uncommon for customs agents to discover packages of illegal drugs and narcotics bound to a portion of the structure of the undercarriage of a vehicle. In some cases, illegal immigrants have been discovered strapped underneath a vehicle. At entries to prisons and detention facilities, both scenarios have also transpired.
Terrorists, both domestically and abroad, have chosen the undercarriage of vehicles for their hiding place for explosives and detonation devices. Some terrorists attempt to drive a vehicle equipped with a bomb into an area, park the car, and leave it there for later detonation, while other “suicide” terrorist choose to detonate the explosives while they are still in the vehicle. These types of attacks have been carried out at national and international sporting events, in large parking facilities for targeted corporations, airports and train stations, embassies, border checkpoints, and other military and government installations.
For these reasons, many of these types of facilities have been equipped with guard stations where vehicles are stopped and inspected, as shown in FIG. 3. In this portrayal of the typical undercarriage inspection process (30), a guard or soldier (33) will use a mirror (34) mounted on a long handle with wheels (35) to manually and visually inspect the undercarriage (32) of a vehicle (31). The inspection device may be equipped with a flashlight (36) to illuminate the underside of the vehicle through reflection in the mirror (34). The guard will move around the periphery of the vehicle, maneuvering the wheeled mirror so as to inspect most aspects, features and structures under the car.
While this process is very inexpensive and portable, several difficulties and potentially fatal flaws exist with the system. First, the undercarriages of vehicles are extremely “busy” and complicated structures, having hundreds of features such as suspension components, fuel lines and tanks, floorpans, brake components, exhaust manifolds and pipes, mufflers, differentials and constant-velocity joints, transmission case details, etc. As each make and model of vehicle is different, a guard cannot realistically detect features under the vehicle which are not normal, altered, or added unless they exhibit some obvious characteristics (shiny instead of dirty, hanging loose, etc.). As such, a savvy terrorist or smuggler can mask a package of contraband or explosives to evade this type of manual inspection fairly easily.
At least one system has been developed to assist in a more thorough, automated and computer-assisted inspection of vehicle undercarriages. This system requires installation “below grade” or below the surface level on which the vehicle travels. This type of permanent installation is effective for facilities which are considered a permanent target or are a common entry point to a border or prison, in that it may be incorporated into the guard station construction in the driveway passing by the guard's booth. Most of these types of systems also require some cooperation by the driver, such as following a traffic signal to stop the vehicle and advance the vehicle when the equipment is ready for additional scanning and imaging.
As these type of permanent installations can be easily seen and anticipated by terrorists and smugglers, they may simply adjust their plans to work around the permanent inspection point, such as plot an attack on another target or look for a vulnerable point to access the facility without going through the guard booth (e.g. crash a weak fence).
Additionally, these types of permanently-installed systems may be subject to weather conditions such as rain and snow, unless they are installed under an awning or roof and are kept clean.
Further, there are many scenarios where the security risk or threat is temporary in nature, but to which a response must be made quickly—more quickly than the time needed to plant a scanning and imaging device into a roadway or driveway. For example, a sporting event such as the American SuperBowl occurs at different venues each year, so permanently installing a below-grade scanning system is not cost efficient. The same is true of international sporting events, such as the Olympic games and regional and international soccer championships. Still other examples are conventions and diplomatic meetings at hotels and conference centers which draw threats of violence, visits of dignitaries to public and government facilities, temporary stationing of military personnel in make-shift barracks (domestically and abroad), etc. In these cases, the best solution available to date has been the manual rolling-mirror process.
One available solution provided by Singalbau Huber of Germany utilizes a reflective camera bay which is placed in a shallow trench approximately 12″ (30 cm) below grade. The cameras are placed in a horizontal viewing position such that they have a perspective at a mirror which is set at an angle to look out of a slit in the roadway towards the underbody of a vehicle. Induction loops, such as those used to detect vehicles at traffic signals and intersections, are placed in front of and behind the camera bay in order to detect when a vehicle is present, and to estimate the speed of the vehicle. A traffic light is integrated into the system, which allows a cooperative driver to advance his vehicle across the viewing slit.
This system provides some solution to the problems in the art, but in part depends on the use of the induction loops which are known in the art to have reliability problems, and in part depends on installation below grade approximately 12″, reducing its portability.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art for a vehicle undercarriage imaging and inspection system which is portable and can be quickly deployed to respond to changing threat conditions and scenarios. Additionally, there exists a need for this system to provide self-contained illumination, and preferably non-visible illumination such as infrared light, to assist in the inspection of undercarriages regardless of ambient lighting conditions. Further, there exists a need in the art for this system to be highly mobile so that would-be terrorists and smugglers are not able to anticipate the location of inspection points, thereby thwarting their efforts and counter-measures. There also exists a need in the art for computer-assisted inspection to look for non-standard, non-stock features on the vehicle, compared both to known manufacturers' configurations as well as specific configurations for specific vehicles, in order to increase the likelihood of detection an altered or added structure under a vehicle.
Finally, there exists a need in the art for this new system to allow for remote expert analysis and consultation to be employed in cases of questionable undercarriage structures and configurations in order to decrease false alarms and increase the reliability with which the operators view the system.